- So supposedly you can become a detective/cop despite having a huge criminal history

The Verdict

Murdered: Soul Suspect is a prime example of a game with a great concept but a very bad execution.
Though the game's story is quite satisfying with good twists and turns and the sole concept of a detective's ghost trying to solve a crime case from the afterlife gives huge amounts of potential, Murdered struggles to give the player well designed gameplay to actually take advantage of said possibilities.
With that said, the actual game has a big number of problems that ultimately devolve Murdered to a poor to mediocre game at best. With investigation missions that serve absolutely no challenge due to completely inconsequential choices, the player can easily just guess his way through the entire game. Investigations, which supposedly represent the core gameplay of Murdered, are no puzzles but simply redundant clue-collecting busy work void of the least bit of fun or challenge. Following up on this are underdeveloped stealth sections ala trial and error and oddly placed, mundane interaction moments.
With all those problems of Murdered's boring gameplay being so prominent all the time, it's just sad when occassionally the player stumbles upon signs of brillance like the creepy and very interesting backstories of some of the other human ghosts. Whereas reading minds of the living almost never gives you anything interesting to listen to, some of the other ghosts' backstories are definitely exciting enough to be worthy of at least serving as side quests in Murdered. Yet, the possibility of side quests quickly is diminished by Murdered's very limited and almost non-existent "open world".

Players who got excited by Murdered's concept will definitely be left disappointed by the actual final game. With an entertaining story at its core and some nice ghost backstories here and there, yet horrendously unchallenging and boring gameplay, Murdered: Soul Suspect is a poor game that's only worth a rental to experience the 6 hour-main-story once and then never play it again.